On uncultivated land overgrown by white Wild Carrots and yellow Hawkweed Oxtongue a marvelous plant shows its colours. It is a Woolly Thistle (
Cirsium eriophorum) nearly two meters high.
It needed two years to grow so big. The first year the plant made a
leaf rosette at ground level, with a long root that penetrates deep into
the soil to enable the plant to find water, even in a dry summer like
this year. The big three-dimensional leaves are deeply divided and have
soft prickles that go above or below the leaf surface.
The second year the thistle made a stem and flowers. Every flower head
contains dozens of small tubular purple flowers. The flower head
consists of bracts that are connected by a kind of woolly fleece, or
better, a fabric like a thick spider web. In the picture a small green
bug and a whole family of blackish-brown beetles visit the flowers.
